


pause

by emmram



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: 2.07, F/M, Missing Scene
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-19
Updated: 2016-10-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 10:11:31
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8323891
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: A missing scene for 2.07: A Marriage of Inconvenience, right after Constance learns of Bonacieux's death.... Constance dreams.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is a year and a half old, and I apologise in advance. Still trying to find my writing mojo.
> 
> Warnings: Spoilers for 2.07.

**pause**

Constance dreams. Bright, gauzy, indistinct dreams, full of hope and love and soft hands and strong shoulders; dreams like the stories that Fleur tells her laughingly, where a handsome knight gathers her in his arms and rides into the sunset; dreams where this man is sometimes d’Artagnan, sometimes an ineffable presence that she deems the Future in some hopelessly optimistic corner of her mind.

She dreams, one day, that the Future reaches for her again—but its hands are stained with her husband’s blood, and its face is stricken with indescribable anguish. It smells of decay and death and its promise cloys in the air like it has been left outside in the sun too long.

She waits.

She doesn’t wake up.

-

 _Did you_ —she’ll ask d’Artagnan. _Did you do this?_

And she’ll hardly listen to what he has to say as her heart takes residence in her throat, throbbing like it would explode. She’ll imagine d’Artagnan drawing his blade through Bonacieux ( _Jacques_ , she will correct herself, _Jacques_ )’s chest, smooth and cold and efficient like the soldier that he has grown into. She’ll wonder, absurdly, if she will wear d’Artagnan’s presence like a flag, now; she has been won, after all, over battle and blood and strife, passed from one kingdom to another.

 _It’s all right_ , she’ll say faintly. _It is a matter of honour, after all_.

She will wait to wake up.

-

She will not say a word, but she will collapse onto the bench, slick hands slipping over the wood and leaving an ugly swathe over the table. And she will think, _these dead hands helped save a life today_ , and it will ring within her soul like a lie she has no words for. d’Artagnan will sit next to her and his hands will be clean and he will hold her hand and kiss her fingers gently, so gently: _my condolences, madame, on your loss_.

And she will close her eyes, and the cool air will sting against the last gift her husband had given her. She will wonder why, if new life can grow on dead things, she feels so terribly wretched.

She will wait to wake up.

-

d’Artagnan will gather her in his arms without saying another word. _Constance_ , he’ll say, _Constance_ , over and over again, into her hair and in the crook of her neck the way he peppers her with kisses, soft and insistent and tinged with melancholy. She will bury her face in his chest, and maybe she will cry, or maybe she’ll talk, or maybe she’ll just _breathe_ —in sadness, in fear, in wretched, _wretched_ relief. She will smell gunpowder and sweat and blood and taste them in the back of her tongue; she will swallow them and feel them settle in her belly and she—

She will wait to wake up.

-

She will stand for an eternity, alone, and she will wait to wake up.

-

“Constance?” d’Artagnan says, and he sounds scared. There are tears in his eyes and he’s shaking all over, trembling like he’s the one mourning Bonacieux. He shuffles his feet and his hands hover like he wants to do many things at once, but he doesn’t touch her, not yet, and for that she is remotely glad. The blood is drying between her fingers, and she picks at the flakes.

“I need to,” she says, then swallows audibly, “I need to—go to the Palace. The Queen, I need to see her.”

d’Artagnan nods. “Do you want me to—?”

She hesitates, thinks of all the impossible things they’ve asked of each other and all the impossible things she wants him to be, and almost dismisses him before saying, “Yes.”

He nods again before calling for horses; she gathers her skirts and takes in a deep, deep breath.

She will wake up.


End file.
